So, a few months back my brother wrote a fan post on his blog for one of his favorite artists, Sara Bareilles. Now, Sara Bareilles is talented and all, and I do respect her as an artist. But I choose to write about musical groups that don't put my man card in danger (and I'm only writing that because my brother hates it when I talk about man cards). So, OK Go.
Some of you may be aware that OK Go recently came out with a new music video.
Yeah. Awesome. I know. I've shared it with a few people over the last few weeks, and about half the time, they're like, "Who's OK Go?"
WHAT THE HECK, PEOPLE. And most of the other half says something like, "Wait...weren't they those people who danced on the treadmills and stuff?"
Yes. Yes they were. But PEOPLE. They have done SO MUCH MORE cool things since then (which was 2006, by the way. 8 years ago).
Like this.
And this.
And freaking THIS.
PEOPLE. They built a mile-and-a-half long instrument, and they're playing it with a car.
WITH A CAR.
Oh, and they do almost every single one of their music videos in one continuous camera shot, with the exception of the car video, and End Love, which was probably stop-motion photography.
They're coming to Salt Lake in two days, and I think it goes without saying that I can't wait to see them.
One thing that impresses me about the band is that several of these projects have brought together dozens of people to try and do something that's never been done before. But the main reason I love OK Go so much is because they take creativity so far beyond the limits of what anybody thought a band could do. I'm pretty sure at some point during the making of one or more of these music videos, somebody came up to them and said, "Um, isn't this pretty much impossible?" "This is never, NEVER going to work." "You've tried this, like, 40 times already, why don't you just give up?" "Why are you buying 280 guitars and 55 pianos to make this music video?"
And they just do it anyway. They never say it, but everything they do sends the message that creativity doesn't have limits. There shouldn't be anybody who says, "You can't do this." There shouldn't be anybody who says that something you created has broken the rules of creativity. Because there are none.
This is a departure from the series of posts I began a couple weeks ago.
Creativity is something that hasn't ever seemed like part of my personality. And for the most part, I've never had a problem with that. I get plenty of pleasure out of simply experiencing the creative works of others. And, since I am fairly proficient in music, I do enjoy performing creative works using the instruments I am familiar with. The way I see it, creativity is a win-win situation. Those who create and those who experience both benefit. For most of my life, I have been content to sit back and let other people be creative.
But for the past few months, I've started feeling a desire to create things. I've had several opportunities recently to develop my talent of singing, and some of my friends are attempting to form an a cappella group. I'd like to try writing some things that we could perform together. They probably wouldn't be very complex; mostly just some hymn arrangements. I have an idea of something I could use to write an original piece, but I won't elaborate on that until I have a better idea of what form that's even going to take. I'm definitely going to start small if I'm going to try creating anything.
Not that I haven't created anything before. I mean, I've written my fair share of book reports, essays, and (to use an example that wasn't mandated by education) blog posts. But in most of those cases, I felt more like I was transcribing something that was already there into a visible form. Especially with the blog posts. The vast majority of them (including this one) are about topics that have come into my mind lately, or things that have happened in my life, and I just put my thoughts and experiences on paper (or online). I rarely feel like it was something that I just brought into existence. But that's exactly how Dieter F. Uchtdorf describes creation:
"Creation means bringing into existence something that did not exist before."
It's talks like these that open my eyes to the concept that God wants us to create. And I've been aware of that for a while, but lately I've been feeling like now is the time for me to start really trying to create something. Specifically, a musical something.
But here's the deal. I've casually thought about that several isolated times in the past, and every time, I have this general feeling that almost everything musical that can be created has been created. And I know that Boyd K. Packer said that there is still plenty of good music that remains to be written. But even if I was to create something new, would it sound so much like an existing song that it wouldn't really even be worth it?
And here's another deal. Uchtdorf says that creation is bringing something new into existence, but he also teaches that crucial to creation is relying on and trusting in the Spirit. And I wouldn't be surprised if every work of creation was directly or indirectly influenced by the Spirit, even in a small way. But if I rely totally and completely rely on the Spirit for any work of creation that I do (which I don't think is a problem), can I really justify calling it creation anymore? Or, at least, can I call it mine?
I do believe that the act of creation consists largely of the ability to transform an idea that's already there into another form. And maybe that's all it is. After all, the creation of the universe by God was not bringing matter into existence that didn't exist before. It was the organization of already-existing matter into a usable form. I don't really know where the ideas for creation come from, and I don't know if I will ever know, or if anybody will ever know. I don't know if there's a single hypothetical "source of creativity" that simply manifests itself in different forms, or if every conscious mind is (or can be) a source of creativity in itself. But I think before I get to the point where I feel like I can create, I'm going to have to uncover more of that mystery.
I'm not as much of a geek as I am a nerd, but I still like to see cool technology at work. Inventors fascinate me at their ability to synthesize creativity with technical knowledge and make something that no one has ever thought of before. I especially enjoy when people draw their ideas from nature and model their creations after things that have already been created. In one of the videos I'm attaching to this post, biologists and inventors worked together to create a robotic gecko that was able to climb walls and right itself while airborne just like normal geckos. However, the robot did it many times slower than a live gecko, despite or perhaps because of its fancy machinery. In another video, Dennis Hong creates a humanoid robot that can mimic many of the movements a human can make, but it is again awkward, tedious, and slow. I wondered what the uses of his "walking" robots would be, because they traveled about as quickly as molasses going uphill in the wintertime. None of these can even compare to the complexity of the most primitive life forms, and this fact strengthens my testimony of the creation even more. It reminds me of the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says, "If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" (3 Nephi 14:11 and Matthew 7:11) God and Jesus have a capacity to create that is infinitely beyond anything mankind can achieve at this time. Ever since taking college, I have learned a lot more about the laws of chemistry and physics that govern His universe, and I am fascinated by the boundless ingenuity that went into the entire process. I've always wondered what it will be like when we become gods and are able to create our own universes. You literally have to know EVERYTHING in order to be able to create something of that magnitude, and don't even get me started on how amazingly beautiful the Plan of Salvation is. God truly does love us, and we can't even begin to understand how much unless we are gods ourselves.
And no, I don't think I can write a blog post without including my religious convictions. Deal with it.
